


The Dismantled Sky

by thesynapticsnap



Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - World War II, Dubious Consent, F/M, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 20:45:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2039508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesynapticsnap/pseuds/thesynapticsnap
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1945. Kozmotis isn’t where he wants to be when it happens, but there’s a small comfort in having someone to suffer aside him. Originally written for BlackIce Week theme, “Post-Apocalyptic”.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dismantled Sky

…the stars burned brighter than ever before.

***

“I won’t be long.”

The door stood ajar, letting in the scent of dead earth and the salt that blanketed the roads. The earth had been buried while he slept curled on the sofa the prior night. Now, all was quiet save for the distant rumble of machinery. The world was white. Unblemished. It was too early for anyone else to know.

He kicked at the soft white pile on the steps with the toe of his boot. It left an ugly hole right in the middle of something perfect and made him feel a little better.

“It’s a three month assignment,” he said.

He expected to meet the dark hollow of the foyer when he turned, but she was still there. There as she’d always been. The shadows of morning hugged her tall, naked frame like a gown. She looked older than he remembered.

“They needed someone with experience. It came down to me because no one else had it. It’s three months. Just three.”

Hours and days and months fell in tiny pieces and piled into years. Three months. His daughter was always a year older when he returned.

“Something bad is going to happen,” she said. She rubbed at her skinny arms, trying to kindle a warmth that had gone out long ago.

He remembered when they were young and she’d taken him to her home. She’d worn a top that barely covered her breasts and shorts that made her golden legs a mile long, but he’d watched her bare feet more than anything. He’d waited for her to step on something sharp or trip over the tree roots in the path but it never happened. The South wrapped its heat around his throat as they went deeper and deeper into the forest. He imagined ghosts and monsters she’d told him about on the car ride down following them.

Kudzo and Spanish moss twined itself around her bones and there was no taking the Southern strangeness from her when he brought her North. Aside their newborn daughter she nursed a fear of the otherwordly, quietly following little rituals to keep her safe from haints and creatures that sucked the breath from sleeping babes.

Before him now, she looked like a crone from one of her tales. Her black hair fell in tangles over her breasts, and she was thin and pale. The only fullness sat in her midsection. He pretended she was bloated on superstition and stars.

“Nothing bad is going to happen. It’s Baltra. There’s nothing going on in Baltra.”

“I know that,” she said.

“Then what is it?”

He wondered why she didn’t shiver as the cold crept all around her. He thought of shutting the door when he looked out and saw the first dull throb of sunlight in the grey sky, but instead he kicked at the pile of white on the porch again.

“Do you remember our first argument? When we were still in college?” she said.

“No,” he lied.

“You asked me how I could still believe after we looked at M57 at the observatory.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“And I told you, ‘I just feel it. I just know’. And you said you didn’t understand how such a smart girl could cling to something so empty.”

He wanted to leave before their daughter awoke. She did not know them before dawn. The light of day transformed them into the beautiful, happy mother and father she knew, but in darkness they were the creatures she feared. A monster all in black that fed on blood and an old witch who walked naked under the moon.

“Don’t go,” she said. “I know you never believe me, but please, just this once. I just know.”

***

Jack watched the ship finally drop its ramp. The usual lot filed out - slim, grinning boys with rosy cheeks and vacant heads. Probably just out of high school, married in a quiet little church before they traded their letter jackets in for the blues. They would want to talk about football while he drank with them and how much they missed their girls while Jack sucked them off. In the morning, they’d sneer at him as they dressed, maybe wrap a hand around his throat and threaten to kill him before they left. Hit him where they’d kissed him the night before.

If they weren’t so pretty, Jack would have been done with Navy boys a long time ago.

The officers lingered on deck, waiting for the rowdy squads to disperse. The men were old and complained of the sweltering heat as they sweat into their black uniforms. Some were too old to care about appearances and started to pull off their jackets and hats. Only one among them, the youngest if Jack was going by the simplicity of his uniform, stood tall and rigid even as the sweat ran down his face.

Jack’s gaze followed the stoic man when he finally followed the other officers down the ramp. He seemed to regress in age with each step he took. The wrinkles and grey hair Jack had imagined at a distance weren’t there. The man wasn’t old, but he was well beyond his years as a teenaged sailor. He didn’t have pockmarks to brush against Jack’s face when they kissed, nor would he brag of how three spindly chest hairs made him a man when he took his shirt off before they made love.

“Come on, Kozmotis!” an old man walking aside Jack’s target said to him, reaching up to clap him on the shoulder. “Lighten up. This is a dream. They could have sent us to the front, for godssake! We’re on a little island in the middle of nowhere and you look like you’ve been sentenced to hell.”

“I’m just tired,” responded the man, Kozmotis. “I’m not going to join you for drinks. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“Kozmotis,” said the old man with a huff. “I’ll make it an order if I have to. You need a drink.”

“I’d really prefer to retire, sir.”

“Hmph. Fine then, fine. No excuses tomorrow night, understood?”

“Understood, sir.”

Jack hopped up from where he was sitting and followed after Kozmotis’ retreating form. The man was too damned tall and walked too damn fast.

“Kozmotis!” Jack called.

Kozmotis stopped and looked over his shoulder, confused.

“Do I know you?” he asked when Jack stood before him.

“Sorry, I just overheard that guy say your name. I’m Jack. I work for the tour boat place here.”

“I’m not interested in anything you have to sell. Now excuse me—”

“No, wait, I’m not trying to sell anything. I just uh… I noticed you looked kind of depressed. Wondering if you’d want to grab a drink with me. It’s not where the others are going. It’s quiet, I promise.”

“No thank you. Goodbye, now.”

Jack felt foolish trailing after Kozmotis, but he was determined to snare him. To get a real man for once instead of those scruffy-faced punks he usually settled for.

“I’m just trying to be friendly,” Jack insisted. “I can show you around the island. We can take my boat, no charge. It’s nice, really. I think you’d like it.”

Kozmotis said nothing.

“Have you ever seen those weird birds with blue feet? There’s lots of them here. I can show you.”

Silence.

“I’m a captain, you know. We’d have lots to talk about. What’re you, anyways? A lieutenant?”

Jack screeched to a halt as Kozmotis stopped, turning to look at him.

“Lt. Commander,” he said. “Shouldn’t you know that from looking at my uniform, captain?”

“Aw, come on, that’s an easy mistake. Anyways, I’ve been out of the Navy for a while now. Decided to settle down and start a business of my own, set my own hours, my own rules.”

“Is that so? Did you retire from the Navy sometime between being born and learning to crawl? How old are you, kid?”

“I’m a prodigy, you might say.”

Kozmotis shook his head and gave a snort.

“Why are you bothering me, Captain Jack?”

“I told you. I’m just trying to make friends.”

_I’m trying to get you drunk and horny enough to take off that godforsaken uniform and press me down with that big sweaty body and fuck me into oblivion, that’s why I’m bothering you._

“Maybe I don’t want friends. What’s the point? I’m stationed here for three months, and then I’ll never see anyone on this island again. Including you.”

_That’s exactly the point. You get to fuck the little queer and no one will know how you buried yourself in a man like it was coming home or the way my throat closed around your cock or how you told me you loved me and you can go back home and act like it never happened. I guess that’s what the rest of them do._

“It can’t hurt nothing,” said Jack, shrugging.

“It might hurt. Sometimes you miss people more than you think you will.”

***

Jack looked down at Kozmotis’ hand and found it there, a golden shackle against his finger. So rarely did he meet free men. Even the young ones were always bound to some distant Martha or Alice. The only ring Jack ever got from the men was the red and purple one their hands left around his neck.

“Married long?”

“A while.”

“Kids?”

“A daughter.”

Jack huffed and reached into the pockets of his shorts to retrieve a cigarette and match. He held out the case, offering one to Kozmotis, which, unsurprisingly, he declined. Jack took a long drag and wished he could just be satisfied with sucking on cigarettes. What the hell was wrong with him. He was like a fish that kept getting itself caught in the same net, letting the same men tear him out of the water and chop him to pieces time and time again.

“Are you married?” Kozmotis asked him, and Jack nearly laughed because the question was so goddamned stupid and he was so blatantly queer. Kozmotis seemed sincere. Maybe they didn’t have men like him where he was from.

“No. No, I’m not. It’s okay though.”

“When I was your age I didn’t think I’d ever get married either.”

Jack puffed out a cloud of smoke that matched the fat clouds in the pink sky. The boat rocked gently in the waves, its underside occasionally brushing the shore where he’d anchored it. It’d taken a week, but he’d finally got Kozmotis to agree to a boat ride after work. He showed him the blue-footed birds like he’d promised and they’d passed a group of furry seals lazing on the rocks on the way in. The seals had rolled off into the water at the noise of the boat, but within the hour they’d reclaimed their rocks and were now watching the two men with wide, bored eyes.

Jack laid his hand upon Kozmotis’ thigh and stroked slowly, timidly. The way a woman would touch him.

Kozmotis shoved his hand away and crossed his legs.

“Take me back,” he said. His voice trembled, and Jack could not place whether it was out of disgust or rage. Maybe both. Maybe neither.

“It doesn’t make you queer,” said Jack. “It doesn’t make you anything. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Take me back. Now.”

“It doesn’t mean anything. Just let me. Please.”

Surrounded by water, and he couldn’t drink a drop of it. It would bloody his insides and if it didn’t kill him it would only make his thirst greater.

***

She held their daughter in her arms and kept her chin atop her head so she couldn’t see her face. The crackle of the radio static made her think smoke would leak over the airwaves and choke them in the living room.

“What’s going to happen, Mama?”

“It’s okay. It’s okay. We’re okay.”

She could protect their daughter against ghosts and monsters and the shadow that hid under the bed, but there was no rhyme or talisman for this.

There was no way to put out the fires.

***

He let the tide roll in around him until the cold waves crashed against his chest and he felt the sting of it in his eyes. His clothes clung uncomfortably to his skin as he retreated from the water and walked along the dry sand. He looked at the ship against the horizon. It looked like a mountain, dark and ancient and unmoving even against the sucking currents.

The boy, Jack, found him eventually. He saw the way Jack’s blue eyes drank in the sight of his soaking body and didn’t say anything.

“You heard, didn’t you?” asked Jack.

“Of course I heard. You were asleep with the rest when the news came. I heard it before you.”

“Yeah, well, good. You know. Anyways, that’s why I’m here.”

Two weeks had passed since Jack stroked his thigh and tried to sink to his knees before him. Two weeks since he’d shoved him away and refused. It’d been a week since the news. Three days since he’d secretly given up hope. Time piled up fast even here, on the little island that seemed far, far away from the world.

“You can’t say no now,” said Jack. “This is it. It’s over.”

The tide came and went as it always had. The sky was a vast and endless blue in the day and dark and full of stars at night. A week ago, the man on the radio told them it was the end of times. He said black clouds loomed over the cities and rained soot and poison. That the fires just wouldn’t stop, that they caught the sea itself aflame. This was what they deserved, he said. There was sobbing, the sharp bang, and then nothing.

No one contacted them after that.

“It doesn’t seem like it’s over,” said Kozmotis.

“You’re an idiot if you believe that. Look around you, Koz. It doesn’t rain anymore. The radios don’t work. They sent a guy out a week ago and he hasn’t come back. It’s over.”

Kozmotis glared at him, a sudden rage washing over him. He knew it was the end. He didn’t need to hear it aloud.

“What do you want?” he said, his voice strained, low. He advanced on the boy with his fists clenched at his sides and Jack backed away on bare feet through the sand. “What do you want from me? This? Is this it?”

He grabbed the boy’s skinny wrist and shoved his hand against the front of his wet shorts. Jack tugged it away and fell against the dunes, eyes brimming with enraged tears.

“If it’s the end of the goddamned world, you need to worry about something else,” Kozmotis said coldly. “Go home to your family. Be grateful you get that chance.”

“No family,” Jack said bitterly. “They disowned me.”

“They won’t care about that now. Go home.”

“I don’t want to wait out the end of the world huddled in a room praying. They’d probably just say I caused this, anyways. I don’t want to go home.”

“I don’t think they would say something like that. Not now.”

“You don’t get it. God, I sure wish I’d gotten the chance to be old and not have a damn clue.”

***

He felt her hand on his shoulder and looked up from his book, causing the glasses to slip down his nose. She giggled and propped them back into place.

“It’s late,” he said. “You should be back at the dorms. You’re going to get in trouble.”

“It is late,” she replied. “What are you doing here?”

“Studying. That stupid art history exam I told you about. I don’t know why I even have to take that class.”

“The same reason I have to take organic chem. Do you think I like it?”

“Well, at least that’s actually important.”

“And art isn’t? I think the world would be rather boring without it.”

“I’d find something to amuse me without it, I’m sure. Anyways, get out of here. They’re going to catch you.”

“I don’t care,” she said, and she kissed him deeply, slowly.

“Please,” he said when they parted. “I have to pass this exam. I need to study, and you need to go home.”

“Is that exam really going to matter 100 years from now?”

“Is anything going to matter then?”

She pursed her lips and straightened her back, securing her purse around her shoulder.

“I guess not, Koz.”

***

The summer sun had gilded his skin and turned his hair the bright white of the shells that littered the shoreline. Girls started to point and giggle when he passed, and when he complained about it to his sister she told him it was a good thing. They thought he was attractive, she explained. She, however, still thought he was gross.

He felt a certain adolescent pride in being wanted, but none of the girls interested him. Some were really pretty and had big breasts, but Jack felt content watching them play on the beach in their swimsuits. His friends thought he was crazy.

“If I were you, I’d go on a date with Carol,” said his friend Jim. “Carol’s a swell gal.”

“You only like Carol because she wears tight tops,” said another friend, Mike. “I don’t know about going steady with her. Maybe feel her up once or twice, sure, but as a girlfriend…?”

“I don’t want a girlfriend,” Jack told them. “Too much trouble. And you gotta buy them things all the time.”

“Well, that’s true.”

“Yeah, good point.”

How could he tell his friends his eyes had wandered to the strong, muscular men on the beach? They didn’t need to know that he was beneath those men in his mind when he touched himself. They didn’t need to know, and neither did his family. Or anyone, for that matter. He guessed he’d just marry a girl eventually, or maybe throw himself into the ocean. He’d have to decide.

But just admitting it to himself was like the blooming of a corpse flower. The putrid scent of his secret want carried over the island and brought the scavengers to him. Their white smiles glistened in the flames of bonfires as they called to him sweetly, promising booze and fun. Their fingers brushed over his when they handed him their money for a boat tour. He was frightened of them and never let one of them coax him into it, though at night he used their grins and warm hands in his fantasies and hated himself for it.

Then there was the man like him. Jack knew he was queer the minute he stepped into the cafe. He had his arms crossed over his chest like he was keeping his whole body from splitting in two down the middle. Jack knew how that felt. He sat across from the man and said hello.

“Hi,” the man said shyly. His gaze raked over Jack’s young, slender body as a hundred gazes had before, but Jack didn’t feel nervous or dirty this time. The man was red in the face, ashamed, and Jack told him it was okay.

“I’m…well, it’s the same for me,” Jack said.

“Really?” breathed the man. “But why?”

“Why? I don’t know. Why are you?”

“I don’t know. I wish I wasn’t. I really do.”

They left the cafe and Jack took one of the boats from the dock. He’d been driving since he was little, he told the man. He didn’t tell him he’d never driven at night. He just drove slow and hoped there wasn’t anything in the way.

He beached the boat on a shore far enough from home that no one would see them or hear whatever noises lovers made. Jack felt suddenly ill when the man leaned over and kissed him, hands slipping beneath his shirt.

“Your heart is pounding,” whispered the man.

“It’s my first time.”

“I won’t hurt you,” the man promised.

It did hurt. But it was a good kind of hurt.

The man didn’t take himself out of him until he was soft. Then he lifted Jack into his arms and took him into the cool water to wash the come from his thighs. Jack kissed him and asked him if he was going to stay. There was no reply, and that was answer enough.

***

The stores had been raided. The old man just stood in the epicenter of the damage, staring at the mess.

“Are you surprised?” Kozmotis asked. “Are you really?”

The old man turned to him, purple-faced, ready to explode. But the will left him. He sighed. Turned the desk chair upright and fell into it like a wave crashing against the shore.

“No, I’m not,” he said. “Not really.”

Kozmotis started to lean down and pick up the scattered papers from the floor and the old man grunted at him.

“Leave it.”

“Ok.”

Fragments of the broken radio glittered in all corners of the room. He didn’t bother feeling sick. He just hoped destroying it had given someone a brief moment of peace.

“I’m going to tell you what we’re going to do,” said the old man. “We’re taking ourselves to hell’s door before Death comes to give us a ride.”

Kozmotis regarded the pistol with feigned apathy.

“Four left in this one,” the old man went on, waving the pistol in front of him. “I like you, Koz. That’s why I’m telling you this.”

“Why can’t we take the ship? Why haven’t we even tried?”

The old man smiled and it was the way a corpse’s skin stretched tight over its teeth in a death grimace.

“There’s nothing left. Nothing.”

“No one knows that for sure. We sent one man out. It needs to be all of us. We need to take the ship. We don’t know.”

“I know!” snarled the old man. “I know it, goddammit. I’ve believed in something higher than mankind all my life, Koz. Something good and kind watching out for us. I felt it die before the message even came through. It’s gone, and if it’s gone I don’t want to be here to see what comes next.”

The pistol’s muzzle rested cold against his temple.

“There’s gonna be three left after this. Don’t be a fool, Koz. This is better than waiting.”

“I’ll wait,” Kozmotis said quietly.

There was one bullet remaining when it was over. Kozmotis looked down at his old friend, bleeding into the scattered papers, and made sure he’d put an end to his suffering before he left. His hands shook as he flipped the safety and shoved the gun in his waistband, stumbling outside.

“I followed the bloody footsteps,” Jack told him when he sat down beside him at the shoreline. “Who did you kill?”

“A friend,” Kozmotis said. “He shot himself and it didn’t work. So I shot him again. And again. And he died.”

“I’ve never killed anyone before. I’ve thought about it.”

The sky was grey overhead. Clouds pregnant with the empty promise of rain sat over the ocean, and the waters stank of dead fish he’d yet to see. Nothing that died in the sea ever made it to shore, it seemed. The creatures beneath the surface clung ravenously to the fading life his fellow men were so eager to snuff. The sea creatures ate their lovers and children and friends just to breath in another gulp of poisoned water. He’d thought it’d be like that for them too, but those who wanted to live were scattered, rare.

Kozmotis frowned when he turned and saw the bruise on Jack’s cheek. His fingertips brushed over it tenderly, earning a soft blush from the boy before he winced.

“Who did this to you?”

“I guess they’re your guys. From the ship. They’ve taken over the bar now.”

“What were you doing over there?”

“Going for a drink, obviously,” said Jack, rolling his eyes. “Like booze wasn’t the first thing to go. I was looking for a fuck.”

“Why.”

“Because I like having someone close to me for a while. You can’t get any closer than letting a person inside of you. Or five. I lost count. It started to hurt and then I didn’t feel anything at all.”

“Why did they hit you?”

“They always hit me. Most of them. I guess they’re ashamed or something.”

Jack stretched out his skinny legs in the sand and yawned. He was pale, Kozmotis noticed, a strange thing for an island-dweller that spent his days under the sun. Maybe he’d always been like that or maybe he’d lost his color under the clouds. Kozmotis had never really looked at him.

“Does it gross you out?” Jack asked, looking over at him. “That I sleep with men?”

“No. It’s none of my business.”

“But you pushed me away that night.”

“I’m married.”

“But that shouldn’t matter now. Who’s going to care if you fuck me?”

“I have a wife,” Kozmotis said. The words burned against his tongue like a lie.

“You don’t have a wife anymore. You’ve got an island, maybe a year to live, and me.”

He let the noise of the waves drown out the truth.

***

“Please don’t go,” she begged again.

He shut the door and went to her, wrapping himself around her frail body like a cocoon. She sobbed quietly against his uniform and held tightly to the crease of his jacket.

“You’ve made yourself sick,” he said. “I want you to sleep. I want you to take care of yourself. You have to be strong for her.”

“Listen to me. You can’t go. If you do, I’ll never see you again. _We’ll_ never see you again.”

He wondered why she was acting this way, when every time before she’d seen him off with a loving farewell and promise to keep the home together. Maybe she knew about the bombs. He didn’t know how she would, since he’d never mentioned them. Sometimes he almost let himself admit maybe she just did know some things, but it always made him feel foolish and he dismissed the notion.

“I swear to you, I’ll be home again. Three months. That’s all.”

***

In three months, the food and water in the ship was gone.

“It should have lasted two years,” said Kozmotis. He looked at the pitiful handful of cans he’d salvaged from the depths of the ship.

“How many bullets did you say were left in that gun?” asked Jack.

“One.”

“Rock-paper-scissors you for it.”

Kozmotis hid the cans under a pile of rubble and sank to the floor, resting his back against the wall of the shack he shared with Jack. No one bothered them here. Not anymore.

A cold wind blew in through the cracks in the boards and chilled him to the bone. He wrapped his filthy coat tighter around his body and tried to think of something other than how much he hurt all over. Jack sat in his lap and tucked his body against Kozmotis’ chest, and this time Kozmotis wrapped an arm around him rather than sit there and do nothing at all.

“I don’t know why we’re still alive,” said Jack. He pushed his hand under Kozmotis’ jacket and trailed his fingertips down his back.

“We need to leave,” Kozmotis said. “We could take your boat. It can’t be like this everywhere.”

“You told me you knew, Koz. It is like this everywhere. We poured gasoline all over ourselves and lit the match. I thought you’d listened to the radio.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this. They told us the bombs would only affect the cities they hit. It was supposed to be contained. It can’t be everywhere.”

Jack kissed his stubbled jaw and ran his teeth across his throat. His hands were on his back, his knee between his legs, grinding. He held the boy and let him move against him because he didn’t know what else to do. His cock was hard when Jack pulled his pants down and ran his hands down his bare thighs.

“Want you to fuck me,” Jack murmured against his ear. He sat up and tore at the raggedy clothes hanging off his body. Kozmotis could see the bones of his ribcage when he exhaled, and his hipbones were twin daggers at his waist. He was easy to lift and carry to the pile of fabrics they’d fashioned into a bed. Easy to break, if he’d wanted to.

“Open me up,” Jack gasped, spreading his legs wide. “I haven’t been with anyone since the night at the bar.”

He led Kozmotis through everything he needed to do, and Kozmotis felt almost removed from himself as he went through the motions. He watched his fingers sink into the body beneath him and felt the hot tightness around them, but it didn’t seem like it was really happening.

When he noticed the gold band resting against Jack’s skin, he tried to tug it back over his knuckle. It slipped down again. He stared at it for a moment before pulling out and setting it in the dirt beside them, then eased his naked fingers back inside.

***

“Piece of shit,” Jack grumbled. He gave the steering wheel a hard kick that hurt more than it was worth. “It won’t crank. It won’t fucking crank.”

Kozmotis took the key from the ignition and threw it into the water. Something burbled to the surface and dragged the silver glimmer to the depths.

“You didn’t think there was anything out there anyways,” said Kozmotis. “Sit down or you’ll wear yourself out. Just sit down. Let’s just stay here for a while.”

Jack sank into the seat and hugged his knees to his chest. He looked over at Koz and tried to smile.

“It was good,” said Jack. “What we did the other night. Thank you.”

Kozmotis thought of the way he’d pressed deep inside the boy and how Jack had cried and told him to keep going, keep going until he reached his goddamned soul. He fiddled with the golden ring on his thumb.

“Oh, don’t do that,” said Jack. “Don’t do that now. Please. Just for once I’d like to fuck a guy and not have him whine about his woman.”

“I loved her. I loved her and our daughter. And I guess they’re gone now, aren’t they?”

“Yes.” No ‘they could still be alive’, no ‘don’t talk like that’. People got honest when they were dying.

Kozmotis went and sat beside Jack and tucked his coat around him.

“Do you think they’ll eat us when we die?” asked Jack, closing his eyes and resting his head against Kozmotis’ shoulder. “I saw them the other day. I don’t think they have any food either. Must have ate it all thinking they’d die before it mattered.”

“It doesn’t matter, not really,” said Kozmotis. “Maybe they’ll eat us. There isn’t much left though, is there?”

“I don’t know how I’m even alive like this. It hurts.”

“I know.”

Kozmotis pulled the pistol from his jacket and tenderly brushed it against Jack’s cheekbone. The boy didn’t open his eyes.

“I have a gift for you,” said Kozmotis.

“I don’t want it.”

“It won’t hurt anymore.”

“Maybe I want it to hurt just a little longer.”

The stormclouds roared overhead and he felt rain against his face. The first rain in so long. He opened his mouth and let it fall against his tongue and tasted ash. He looked down at Jack and found him blinking black droplets from his eyes. He didn’t have enough of anything left in him to cry.

***

“Are you alive?”

“Yes. I can’t die before you do. You’re older. You get to go first.”

Jack eased his soaked body upright and leaned heavily against Kozmotis. His breath came in wheezes through his shivering lips.

“I’m not a real captain, you know. Thought I should tell you.”

“You can be a captain now.”

Jack let his head fall back and looked up at the sky.

“When did it stop raining?”

“A while ago.”

“It’s beautiful. I wish I could be up there.”

Kozmotis pulled Jack close. They were too thin to keep one another warm, too tired to pull off the freezing rags killing them faster. But it was good to have someone there that was real. He wondered if he’d dreamed the other life. His head ached when he tried to remember it and he knew he wouldn’t make it to morning.

“Are you sure this is okay?” he asked Jack. He didn’t know if he had the strength to pull the trigger, but he’d find a way if Jack wanted it.

“It’s okay. I think it’ll be soon.”

“You can go if you want. I won’t be much longer.”

“No. I want to look at the sky for a while. It’s so beautiful.”

Kozmotis gazed up at the heavens. She’d told him the whole universe would blink out star by star when the world ended. Yet there against the night sky…


End file.
